Group Rationality Diary, January 16-31

therufs

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for January 16-31.

It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Immediate past diary: January 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for January 16-31.

It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Immediate past diary: January 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

I've been experimenting with a new schedule, where days of the week are assigned to topics (mostly for stuff to do in the evening after work and after the kid is in bed):

Monday is for drawing and art
Tuesday is for studying psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, motivation, learning...
Wednesday is for writing
Thursday is for programming
Friday is for relaxing
Saturday is for studying statistics and machine learning
Sunday is for strategy, reviewing the week, evaluating my current plans and coming up with new ones

So far I find it's an improvement, and is better at making sure I'm working on all of those (it also gives me a system in which I can dump "interesting things" without feeling the need to spend hours reading up on them right away ... when tuesday (psychology) comes around, I have a little list of the interesting-looking topics or links that I ran accross since last time, and choose which one to read, study, and enter in Anki).

Also, in my daily routine:

Get up as soon as the alarm rings (solid habit now, I used to loaf in bed for some time several months ago)
Exercise in the morning (I use some android apps by Rittr Labs to keep track of how much I should do, as recommended by hyporational; I cycle between squats, situps, pushups and superman)
Study my Anki decks (usually in public transit or when waiting in line)
Review HabitRPG (which I use to structure most of the rest)
Write in a gratitude journal (I may drop / tone it down, I'm not sure it's very useful)

I have started doing pomodoros, but not very regularly yet.